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THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 



all the attitudes of advance, retreat, and the striking of the blow were gone through with 

 various manoeuvres, such as the forming of single file and of column. Clubs are carefully 

 decorated when used for dancing ; some indeed seem to be kept for this purpose, 

 and to correspond to our court swords in being merely decorative. There are flat spaces 

 near the heads of the curved clubs, which on festive occasions are freshly smeared with 

 red, blue, or white paint. Coloured strips of screw pine leaf are often wound round the 

 clubs, and some are decked with beads strung on Rhizomorpha fibres. Thackombau's 

 son's club was, as I have said, freshly painted blue near the top. The King himself on 

 state occasions had a decorated club carried before him, just as at home the Vice Chancellor 

 of Oxford, and even the President of the Royal Society, now have. 



" In the fan dance all the dancers were provided with a fan of tappa stretched on a 

 wooden frame. They divided themselves into two parties, forming into single file in the 

 smie line with one another, but with a considerable interval between the two parties. 



Km. 177. — Fijian Native with remarkable head-dress, part of dancing costume. From a drawing by Lieut. Swire, R.N. 



The two bands took up the chant and danced alternately, answering each other as it were. 

 The fans were waved in various attitudes, and at the end of each movement thrown 

 suddenly up over the head (still held in the hands), and a wild war-cry was uttered by the 

 whole line simultaneously with the movement. The war-cry was a single prolonged high- 

 pitched note, and sounded intensely savage. In another dance, performed by a large body 

 of men, about one hundred and twenty I think, the dancers formed a sort of rectangular 

 group, arranging themselves in eight rows, the leader being in the centre of the front row. 

 Once or twice the leader came forward to the chorus, and addressed a few words in a 

 dramatic manner partly to them, exhorting them to do their duty well, and partly to the 

 spectators. A club dance by boys was one of the performances. In one figure of this the 

 boys, standing in a line with their bodies bent forwards, jerked their hips with a most 

 astonishing facility, first to one side and then to the other. The motion, especially in 

 eases where the boys had a large quantity of tappa projecting behind as a sort of bustle, 



